Royal Skousen is professor of English at Brigham Young University and
since 1988 has served as the editor of the Book of Mormon critical text project.

Introduction

In this article I discuss what the original manuscript of
the Book of Mormon tells us about how Joseph Smith translated the Book of
Mormon. Historical statements by witnesses of the translation process also
provide valuable information about how Joseph Smith translated, but sometimes
these statements are unreliable. In many respects, the physical evidence from
the original manuscript provides, as we shall see, an important means of verifying
historical statements.1

This physical evidence and the witness statements that it
confirms also shed light on the question of the authorship of the Book of
Mormon. They do not support theories that Joseph Smith composed the text himself
or that he took the text from some other source. Instead the physical evidence
and witness statements are most compatible with the account that Joseph himself
gave, that he translated the Book of Mormon "by the gift and power of
God."2

Witnesses of the translation process make two kinds of claims.
First of all, they provide valuable evidence of what they actually saw taking
place. Generally speaking, their actual observations are consistent with the
physical evidence in the original manuscript. On the other hand, these witnesses
frequently made claims about matters that they themselves could not observe.
For instance, some described what they believed Joseph Smith actually saw
in the interpreters; and many claimed that Joseph Smith could not go on until
the scribe had written down letter-for-letter what Joseph saw. It turns out
that these kinds of claims are not supported by the original manuscript. Of
course, the witnesses themselves did not see what Joseph saw. Here they were
either offering their own conjecture or perhaps recalling what Joseph might
have told them. Nonetheless, all seemed to believe that Joseph Smith
actually saw words in English, and there is evidence in the original manuscript
to support this idea.

This paper will not encompass a complete rehearsal of the witnesses’ statements.
Instead, I will provide, when needed, brief quotes from the fuller statements,
which can be found in a number of sources.3

Statements from Witnesses of the Translation

During the translation process, the witnesses were able to
observe, in an open setting, the following:

Joseph Smith placing the interpreters (either the Urim and Thummim
or the seer stone) in a hat and placing his face into the hat

Joseph Smith dictating for long periods of time without reference to any
books, papers, manuscripts, or even the plates themselves

Joseph Smith spelling out unfamiliar Book of Mormon names

After each dictated sequence, the scribe reading back to Joseph Smith what
was written so that Joseph could check the correctness of the manuscript

Joseph Smith starting a dictation session without prompting from the scribe
about where the previous session had ended

The translation process that these witnesses observed was
an open one—that is, others in the room could observe the dictation
from Joseph Smith to the scribe. But early on in the translation, from late
1827 to early 1828, it appears that Joseph Smith used a different process
while translating. During this time Joseph first copied some of the characters
directly from the plates onto sheets of paper, from which sheets he would
then translate his transcribed characters into English by means of the Urim
and Thummim:

By this timely aid was I enabled to reach the place of my destination in
Pennsylvania, and immediately after my arrival there I commenced copying the
characters of <all> the plates. I copyed a considerable number of them
and by means of the Urim and Thummim I translated some of them . . .4

In the above quote, the angled brackets <
> surrounding all represent a crossout.

During this early period, the plates were uncovered while
Joseph Smith translated (or at least while he copied the characters from the
plates to paper); and since no one was permitted to see the plates until later,
Joseph took precautions to prevent anyone from seeing him working directly
with the plates. Martin Harris, in a couple of early statements, said that
a blanket or curtain separated Joseph Smith from him at the time he (Harris)
obtained a sample transcript and translation to take to Professor Anthon in
New York City.5

In place of this early method, Joseph Smith soon turned to
a method of translation that depended directly on the interpreters alone,
so that the plates did not have to be viewed, and thus the translation could
be done openly. All witnesses that refer to the translation of the lost 116
pages and our current Book of Mormon text (Emma Smith, Martin Harris, and
members of the Whitmer family) openly observed this translation process—one
without a curtain or blanket separating Joseph from his scribe. In fact, according
to Emma Smith, the plates were wrapped up and not directly used.6

On the basis of the witnesses’ statements, we can identify
the following stages in the translation process:

Joseph Smith sees (in some way) the English text,

Joseph Smith reads off the text to the scribe,

the scribe hears the text,

the scribe writes the text.

Evidence from the original and printer’s manuscripts
suggests that the only revealed stage in the translation process was what
Joseph Smith himself saw by means of the interpreters. Witnesses seemed to
have believed that Joseph Smith actually saw an English text in the interpreters,
but it is possible that Joseph saw the text, so to speak, in his "mind’s
eye." But in any event, all other stages—from Joseph Smith
reading off that text to the scribe’s writing it down—potentially introduced
human error and had to be carefully monitored.

There appear to be three possible kinds of control over the
dictation of the Book of Mormon text:

Loose control: Ideas were revealed to Joseph Smith, and he put the
ideas into his own language (a theory advocated by many Book of Mormon scholars
over the years).

Tight control: Joseph Smith saw specific words written out in English
and read them off to the scribe—the accuracy of the resulting text depending
on the carefulness of Joseph Smith and his scribe.

Iron-clad control: Joseph Smith (or the interpreters themselves)
would not allow any error made by the scribe to remain (including the spelling
of common words).

One can also conceive of mixtures of these different
kinds of control. For instance, one might argue for tight control over the
spelling of specific names, but loose control over the English phraseology
itself.

A number of statements from the witnesses definitely show
that virtually all of them believed in the iron-clad theory:

Joseph Knight (autograph [between 1833 and 1847]):

But if it was not Spelt rite it would not go away till it was rite, so we
see it was marvelous.7

Emma Smith (Edmund C. Briggs interview, 1856):

When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it,
as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names
he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out, and while I was
writing them, if I made a mistake in spelling, he would stop me and correct
my spelling, although it was impossible for him to see how I was writing them
down at the time.8

Martin Harris (Edward Stevenson’s 1881 account):

By aid of the seer stone, sentences would appear and were read by the Prophet
and written by Martin, and when finished he would say, "Written,"
and if correctly written, that sentence would disappear and another appear
in its place, but if not written correctly it remained until corrected, so
that the translation was just as it was engraven on the plates, precisely
in the language then used.9

David Whitmer (Eri B. Mullin interview, 1874):

. . . the words would appear, and if he failed to spell the word
right, it would stay till it was spelled right, then pass away; another come,
and so on.10

David Whitmer (James H. Hart interview, 1884):

Sometimes Joseph could not pronounce the words correctly, having had but
little education; and if by any means a mistake was made in the copy, the
luminous writing would remain until it was corrected. It sometimes took Oliver
several trials to get the right letters to spell correctly some of the more
difficult words, but when he had written them correctly, the characters and
the interpretation would disappear and the interpretation would disappear
[a dittography?], and be replaced by other characters and their interpretation.11

A similar example advocating iron-clad control is the secondary
witness of Samuel W. Richards (in a statement recorded over fifty-eight years
later, on 25 May 1907).12 According to Richards, Oliver Cowdery
explained to him during the winter of 1848—49 how Joseph Smith had translated:

Every word was distinctly visible even down to every letter;

and if Oliver omitted a word or failed to spell a word correctly, the translation
remained on the "interpreter" until it was copied correctly.

As we shall see, the first statement is apparently true, but the second one
is definitely false.

Evidence in the Manuscripts

We now turn to the original manuscript and what it can specifically
tell us about the translation process. In a number of instances, it provides
valuable support (or at least consistent evidence) for some events that witnesses
actually saw. This manuscript also provides valuable evidence for procedures
that none of the witnesses described in any of their statements.

The Original Manuscript Was Written from Dictation

Errors in the original manuscript (O) are based on the scribe
mishearing what Joseph Smith dictated rather than visually misreading while
copying from another manuscript. Consider, for instance, the difficulty the
scribe had in hearing the difference between and and an. In 1 Nephi 13:29
of O the scribe (designated as scribe 2) wrote down the following:

& because of these things which are taken away out of the gosple of the
Lamb & exceeding great many do stumble

Obviously, scribe 2 misheard "an exceeding great
many" as "and exceeding great many". The use of the ampersand
(&) shows that the error was not based on visual similarity. Hearing an, the scribe interpreted it
as the casual speech form an’
for and.

A mishearing could also occur when the actual word was rather
infrequent and the scribe replaced it with a more frequent but phonetically
similar word, as in the following example from 1 Nephi 17:48 of
O, when Oliver Cowdery wrote weed rather than reed:

& whoso shall lay their hands upon me shall wither even as a dried weed

In this example, as well as in the previous one, the
scribe of the original manuscript did not catch the error.

In the following example Oliver Cowdery immediately corrected
a misheard word in Alma 57:22 of O. The incorrect meet is crossed out (angled brackets are used to
represent crossouts) and the correct beat
is inserted above the crossout (as indicated by the caret):

for it was they who did <m^eet> beat/ the Lamanites

One particular difficulty for the scribe occurred whenever
Joseph Smith pronounced unstressed ’em
(for either them orhim). In the following two examples,
Oliver Cowdery first interpreted’em as him,
then immediately corrected it by writing them:

& behold they saw him <a> comeing & they hailed him but he
sayeth unto <him> them fear not (Alma 55:8)

In the first instance, Oliver Cowdery simply crossed
out the him and wrote
the correct them immediately
afterwards on the same line. In the second case, Oliver erased the incorrecthim (represented as
<%him%>) and then overwrote the erasure with them (the percent sign with
angled brackets stands for erasure; curly brackets are used to represent overwriting). Both examples show the problems
Oliver was having in interpreting the unstressed ’em of Joseph Smith’s dictation.

Sometimes a following word, when read aloud, interfered with
the scribe’s ability to hear the correct reading. For instance, in Alma 41:14
Oliver Cowdery wrote Sons
instead of Son in
O (he later corrected the error in the printer’s manuscript [P]). In this
example, underlining is used to highlight the textual change:

The source of this error is the following word see, whose initial s would have made it hard for
Oliver Cowdery to hear any difference between son
see and sons see.
This passage comes from Alma’s discourse to his son Corianton; he is speaking
to only one son. In other places in this passage (listed below) son is correctly transcribed
in both O and P because the context does not lead to ambiguity; in these casesson is immediately followed
by either a vowel or a consonant other than s:

now my Son I do not say that their resurrection cometh at the resurrection
of Christ (Alma 40:20)

& now my Son this is the restoration of which has been spoken (Alma 40:24)

& now my Son I have somewhat to say concerning the restoration (Alma
41:1)

I say unto thee my Son that the plan of restoration is requisite with the
Justice of God (Alma 41:2)

& now behold my Son do not risk one more offence against your God (Alma
41:9)

& now my Son all men that are in a state of Nature . . . (Alma 41:11)

& now my Son I perceive there is somewhat more which doth worry your
mind (Alma 42:1)

now behold my son I will explain this thing unto thee (Alma 42:2)

& now remember my Son if it were not for the plan of redemption . . .
(Alma 42:11)

In Alma 41:13 ("O my Son this is not the case"),
the text is not fully extant to show whether Son
or Sons was in
O; P definitely has Son.

In contrast to these examples from O, the errors that are
found in P show that it was visually copied. We have examples where Oliver
Cowdery incorrectly read O when copying it to produce P. In each case, the
error leads to a more difficult reading. As before, underlining is used to
indicate the textual change.

yea & I always knew that there
was a God (O) > also (P)
(Alma 30:52)

& Parhoran retained the Judgment seat which caused much rejoiceing among
the Brethren of Parhoran & also among
the People of liberty (O) > many
(P*) > many of (Pjg, 1830) (Alma
51:7)

[The correct spelling of the name should be Parhoron; the first
four occurrences of this name in O were spelled Parhoron (Alma 50:40,
52:2—3), not Pahoran (as it appears in the current text)
or Parhoran (as shown above in Alma 51:7); the symbol P*
refers to the original hand in P, while Pjg refers to a correction
(in the printer’s manuscript) made by John Gilbert, the compositor for the
1830 edition.]

and he also saw other multitudes pr*ssing their way towards that great and specious bilding (O)
> feeling (P) (1 Nephi 8:31)

All of these errors are due to visual similarity.
In the first two examples Oliver Cowdery miscopied his own hand in O. In the
second example, Oliver wrote "many the People of liberty" in
P, which made no sense, so the 1830 compositor, John Gilbert (whose marks
are designated here by Pjg),
inserted the of to
improve the reading. And in the last example, the hand in O is scribe 3’s.
This scribe’s open p
has a high ascender, which makes his p
look like an f. Thee vowel is missing. And the
first s in pressing was an elongated s (represented as *s in the above transcription),
which Oliver interpreted as an l.

Immediate corrections in the printer’s manuscript also show
the influence of visual similarity in producing P. Here I list some of the
clear examples found in P that show an incorrect word crossed out and the
correct visually similar word from O inserted or written immediately afterwards:

<sanct^ified> satisfied/ (Mosiah 15:9)

<deliver> declare (Mosiah 27:37)

<curse^d> caused/ (Alma 8:13)

<sacra^ment> sacrifice/ (Alma 34:10)

<prisoner^s> provisions/ (Alma 56:27)
[This same correction is also found in Alma 57:11 and 57:15.]

<suppose>^ suffer/ (Alma 58:22)

<cau^se> cease/ (Helaman 4:25)

<burne^d> buried/ (3 Nephi 8:25)

<rewa^rd> rearward/ (3 Nephi 20:42)

Joseph Smith Was Working with at Least Twenty to Thirty Words at a
Time

There is some evidence in the original manuscript for the
minimal amount of text Joseph Smith had access to as he was dictating. Consider,
first of all, the evidence from scribal anticipations. Frequently the scribe,
in attempting to keep up with Joseph’s dictation, jumped ahead of the actual
text. As an example, we have the following case of Oliver Cowdery anticipating
the text in Alma 56:41 of O:

& it came to pass that again <we saw the Lamanites> when the light
of the morning came we saw the Lamanites upon us

This example suggests that Joseph and Oliver started
out together, but by the time Oliver finished writing "& it came
to pass that again" Joseph had moved along far enough that he was then
dictating "we saw the Lamanites upon us" and Oliver started to write
that down when he realized he had skipped the intervening text "when
the light of the morning came," so he immediately crossed out "we
saw the Lamanites" and wrote the correct sequence, possibly with
Joseph repeating the correct text for him. If this explanation is correct,
then it indicates that Joseph Smith had at least twenty words in view as he
was dictating.

It is also possible that this error was produced by Joseph
Smith as he was dictating; that is, Joseph himself may have accidentally skipped
the phrase "when the light of the morning came" and then corrected
himself. In either case, the implication remains that Joseph had access to
at least twenty words.

Another kind of evidence for the length of dictation can be
seen in a change of scribe found in Alma 45:22 of O; Oliver Cowdery (OC) suddenly
stops acting as scribe and Joseph Smith (JS) himself takes over the scribe’s
task for twenty-eight words:

OC: . . . therefore Helaman & his Brethren went forth to
establish the church again in all the land

JS: yea in every citty throughout all the land which
was possessed by the people of Nephi and it came to pass that they did appoint
priests and teachers

OC: throughout all the land over all the churches . . .

These twenty-eight words in Joseph Smith’s hand are
written very carefully. And except for one spelling variant (citty), all the extant words
are spelled according to standard orthography.

One possible explanation for this momentary switch in scribes
is that it represents Oliver Cowdery’s unsuccessful attempt to translate.
It even suggests that Oliver, like Peter the apostle walking on the water,
succeeded at first. For instance, verse 5 of section 9 in the Doctrine and
Covenants implies an initial success on Oliver’s part:

And, behold, it is because that you did not continue as you commenced, when
you began to translate, that I have taken away this privilege from you.

Nonetheless, there is, in my opinion, some difficulty with
the suggestion that these twenty-eight words in Alma 45 represent Oliver Cowdery
translating. One problem is that the switch to Joseph Smith’s hand occurs
in the middle of the narrative, in fact, in the middle of a sentence (although
at a point of semiclosure). One would think that Oliver Cowdery’s attempt
to translate would have come at a more suitable break in the narrative.

My explanation for this scribal switch is that there was a
sudden need for the scribe to break off and Joseph Smith had to get down what
he was currently viewing in the interpreters, so he wrote it down himself.
The reason Joseph would have had to do this is possibly explained by Emma
Smith’s claim in her 1879 interview with her son Joseph Smith III that his
father, Joseph Smith Jr., started dictation sessions without prompting:

I am satisfied that no man could have dictated the writing of the manuscripts
unless he was inspired; for, when acting as his scribe, your father would
dictate to me hour after hour; and when returning after meals, or after interruptions,
he would at once begin where he had left off, without either seeing the manuscript
or having any portion of it read to him. This was a usual thing for him to
do. It would have been improbable that a learned man could do this; and, for
one so ignorant and unlearned as he was, it was simply impossible.13

This ability to continue without prompting suggests that before
ending a dictation session or going on to the next portion of text, Joseph
Smith would have to finish getting copied down all of what he was viewing;
otherwise the uncopied part would be lost. In other words, Joseph had to deal
with what was in front of him and could not quit until what he was seeing
was transcribed.

Joseph’s careful handwriting for these twenty-eight words
as well as his accurate spelling for several difficult words (throughout, possessed, appoint)
suggests that he might have been visually copying and not listening to someone
else dictating the text (unless that person was also spelling out English
words for Joseph). In other early holographic writings of Joseph Smith, we
find numerous examples suggesting that Joseph was not a particularly
good speller. Yet in those writings he does consistently spell through correctly. In documents
dating from 1832, 1833, and 1839, he writes only through,
so the correct spelling of throughout
in Alma 45 may simply be due to the fact that Joseph already knew how to spell
this word.14 Early on, in 1833, Joseph Smith spelled possess
as posess, with a
single s in the middle
of the word. Yet later, in 1840, he had apparently learned how to spell possession correctly, with twos‘s instead of one.15
And an 1832 spelling of appointed is also correctly
written by Joseph Smith.16 So ultimately this brief passage
in Alma 45 has too few words in Joseph Smith’s hand to demonstrate that he
was visually copying from an orthographically correct text. In a cursory examination,
I have found only one holographic writing of Joseph’s that contains an incorrect
spelling (that is, posess) for one of the three
potentially difficult words in this short passage. And of course, we must
remember that Joseph did misspell city
as citty in this passage
from Alma 45. So the spelling evidence is not conclusive.

Still, if this explanation is right (that the generally correct
spelling of the text in Joseph Smith’s hand here in the original manuscript
suggests visual copying), then Joseph Smith was viewing at least these twenty-eight
words.

Joseph Smith Could See the Spelling of Names

Several witnesses to the translation process claimed that
Joseph Smith sometimes spelled out names to the scribe. And we find evidence
in the original manuscript in support of this process. Frequently the first
occurrence of a Book of Mormon name is first spelled phonetically, then that
spelling is corrected; in some instances, the incorrect spelling is crossed
out and followed on the same line by the correct spelling, thus indicating
that the correction is an immediate one. For example, in Alma 33:15 the text
of O reads as follows:

for it is not written that Zenos alone spake of these things but <Zenock>
Zenoch also spake of these things

Oliver Cowdery first wrote Zenock using the expected ck English spelling for thek sound when preceded by a short
vowel. But then Oliver crossed out the whole word and immediately afterwards,
on the same line, wrote Zenoch,
thus indicating that the spelling agrees with the biblical name Enoch. This example also suggests
that Joseph Smith spelled out the ch
sequence for Oliver Cowdery, although it is possible that Joseph could have
repronounced the ch
sequence with the incorrect ch
sound rather than with the correct k
sound in order to help Oliver get it down right.

But there are also examples for which it is impossible to
find a repronunciation that will guarantee the correct spelling. For instance,
in Helaman 1:15 Oliver Cowdery first wrote the name Coriantumr phonetically, as Coriantummer, then he crossed
it all out and wrote out the correct spelling, Coriantumr:

& they were lead by a man whose name was <Coriantummer> Coriantumr

In this case, no matter how slowly or carefully Joseph
Smith might have repronounced Coriantumr,
it would have been impossible for him to have indicated that there was no
vowel between the m
and r at the end of the name except
by actually spelling out the separate letters m
and r. Nor could Oliver
Cowdery have guessed this spelling since no word (or name) in English ends
in mr. In fact, Oliver ends the
correct spelling Coriantumr
with a large flourish on the final r,
which Oliver produces nowhere else in either the original or the printer’s
manuscript. This addition probably reveals Oliver Cowdery’s frustration at
having to guess at such a weird spelling.17

Emma Smith and David Whitmer claimed that Joseph Smith sometimes
spelled out, in addition to names, English words that were difficult to pronounce:

Emma Smith (Edmund C. Briggs interview, 1856):

When my husband was translating the Book of Mormon, I wrote a part of it,
as he dictated each sentence, word for word, and when he came to proper names
he could not pronounce, or long words, he spelled them out . . .18

David Whitmer (Chicago
Tribune interview, 1885):

In translating the characters Smith, who was illiterate and but little
versed in Biblical lore, was ofttimes compelled to spell the words out, not
knowing the correct pronunciation . . .19

There appears to be no firm evidence in what remains
of the original manuscript to support this claim of Emma Smith and David Whitmer.
Long English words found in what remains of the original manuscript are frequently
misspelled, as in the following sampling from 1 Nephi (where misspelled
letters are underlined):

Oliver Cowdery:

2:3 obediant

2:11 immagionations

4:20 treasurey (3 times)

16:19 fateagued

17:30 expediant

17:51 miricles

19:10 espesially

Scribe 2:

3:16 inheritence

13:5 tortereth

13:23 covanants (2 times)

15:20 passified

Scribe 3:

4:20 treashury

4:34 dilligent

4:36 desirus

5:2 inherritance

5:8 surity (2 times)

5:9 sacrafice

5:13 prophasies

5:14 jenealeja

5:14 desendant

6:2 sofiseth

7:1 fammaly

7:8 exampel

7:12 exersise

8:21 concorses

10:2 dilagence

10:4 masiah

11:6 hosana

11:26 condesension

11:34 apostels

12:4 tumultius

Of all these examples, only the spelling for genealogy lends support
to the idea that Joseph Smith spelled out English words. Scribe 3’s spellingjenealeja for genealogy definitely suggests some difficulty in
dealing with this word. In 1 Nephi we have the following spellings forgenealogy in the original manuscript:

Reference

Scribe

Spelling

3:3

Oliver Cowdery

genealogy

3:12

scribe 2

genealogy

5:14

scribe 3

jenealeja

5:16

scribe 3

genealogy

6:1

scribe 3

genealogy

19:2

Oliver Cowdery

genealogy

The fact that both Oliver Cowdery and scribe 2 were
readily able to spell genealogy
correctly suggests that they had no difficulty in dealing with
this word, nor did Joseph Smith in pronouncing it. But the first time scribe
3 tries to spell genealogy (in 1 Nephi
5:14), he writes jenealeja,
a very naive spelling. This scribe’s use of j
in place of g
suggests that he had no idea how to spell this word—and perhaps he didn’t
recognize or even know the word. But a short time later, when the word is
used in verse 16, it suddenly appears in its standard spelling (as also in
6:1). This sudden change implies that someone—possibly Joseph Smith—could
have told scribe 3 how to spell this word.

In any event, if Joseph Smith did spell out long English words,
it appears to have been fairly infrequent. The lack of consistent evidence
for spelling out words of English does not, however, necessarily contradict
Emma Smith’s statement. Emma’s description refers to when she was acting as
scribe, which presumably would have been at the beginning of the original
book of Lehi (which formed part of the 116 manuscript pages that were later
lost). Joseph Smith’s pronunciation of long English words might have improved
sufficiently as the 116 pages were being dictated that eventually he
hardly ever needed to spell out difficult English words. Even in the beginning
there probably wouldn’t have been that many words causing him difficulty.
Having learned how to pronounce the difficult words, he would have simply
relied on the scribe to correctly spell the words he dictated, except for
unfamiliar names.

The original manuscript suggests that the spelling of names
could have been checked whenever the scribe felt unsure of the spelling. This
situation would naturally occur with the first occurrence of an unfamiliar
name in the text. (It could also occur after a substantial hiatus, during
which the scribe might have forgotten the spelling.) As an extended example
of this phenomenon, consider the spelling of Amalickiah
in the book of Alma. The first couple of occurrences are spelled correctly,
but then Oliver Cowdery (the scribe here) starts spelling the second and third
vowels of Amalickiah
as e‘s. At first Oliver catches
these errors and corrects them. But eventually he apparently remembers that
once the scribe has made sure that the first occurrence of a name is spelled
correctly, there is really no need to worry about spelling variance in subsequent
occurrences of the name. In this case, the first spelling Amalickiah establishes the correct
spelling. As long as this is kept in mind, there is no problem if subsequent
occurrences of Amalickiah
are spelled differently. So after the first handful of occurrences, Oliver
rather consistently spells Amalickiah
as Ameleckiah, although
sometimes he immediately corrects the second e
to an i; or sometimes
he later corrects the first e
to an a (always
with a heavier ink flow).

In the following list, we have all the occurrences of Amalickiah and in order of appearance.
Correct spellings are marked with an asterisk (*); some examples are not fully
extant in O and are represented by a question mark ; an e corrected to an a is written as {e|a}; a plus
sign (+) means that the change of e
to a was done in heavier
ink; {e|i} stands for an e
corrected to an i;
and finally, parentheses containing blank spaces means that the text here
is not extant:

correct spelling, without overwriting:

*
46:3 Amalickiah

*
46:4 Amalickiah

overwriting of e‘s begins:

*+
46:5 Am{e|a}l{e|i}ckiah

*+
46:6 Am{e|a}l{e|i}ckiah

?
46:7 —

overwriting suddenly ends; e‘s not corrected at all:

46:10 Ameleckiah

46:11 Amelickiah

?
46:28 —

46:28 Ameleckiahites

?
46:29 —

?
46:29 —

46:30 Amaleckiah

46:30 Ameleckiah

46:30 Ameleckiah

46:31 Ameleckiah

?
46:32 —

46:33 Ameleckiah

46:35 Ameleckiahites

47:1 Amaleckiah

overwriting briefly returns with some consistency:

+ ?
47:3 Am{e|a}(
)ckiah

*+
47:4 Am{e|a}lickiah

*+
47:8 Am{e|a}lickiahs

*+ heading
Am{e|a}lickiah

*+
47:11 Am{e|a}lickiah

?
47:12 —

+
47:13 Am{e|a}leckiah

*+
47:13 Am{e|a}l{e|i}ckiah

overwriting becomes fairly inconsistent:

+
47:13 Am{e|a}leckiah

47:14 Amel{e|i}ckiah

47:15 Amel{e|i}ckiah

*
47:15 Amal{e|i}ckiah

47:16 Ameleckiah

47:18 Ameleckiah

*+
47:19 Am{e|a}l{e|i}ckiah

47:20 Amel{e|i}ckiah

overwriting becomes quite sporadic and infrequent:

47:21 Amelickiah

47:21 Ameleckiah

47:22 Amel{e|i}ckiah

47:25 Ameleckiah

47:27 Ameleckiah

?
47:27 —

47:30 Ameleckiah

47:32 Amel{e|i}ckiah

47:33 Ameleckiah

47:34 Ameleckiah

47:35 Amaleckiah

heading Amel{e|i}ckiah

48:1 Ameleckiah

+
48:7 Am{e|a}leckiah

49:9 Amel{e|i}ckiahites

*+
49:10 Am{e|a}l{e|i}ckiah

?
49:11 —

49:25 Amel{e|i}ckiah

?
51:9 —

?
51:11 —

?
51:12 —

heading Ameleckiah

+
51:23 Am{e|a}leckiah

51:23 Amelickiah

*+
51:25 Am{e|a}l{e|i}ckiah

51:27 Amelickiah

51:30 Amelickiah

51:32 Ameleckiah

51:33 Ameleckiah

?
51:37 ( )el(
)

52:1 Ameleckiah

*+
52:3 Am{e|a}lickiah

52:3 Ameleckiah

heading Ameleckiah

54:16 Amelickiah

55:5 Ameleckiah

?
62:35 —

Quite obviously, the scribe can make errors. There
is definitely no iron-clad control over the text.

The spelling Ameleckiah
also provides evidence that Joseph Smith was pronouncing this name with
stress on the first syllable, with the result that the second and third vowels
were reduced to the indistinct schwa vowel ("uh"). If Joseph Smith
had been pronouncing Amalickiah
as we do currently, with stress on the second syllable, then Oliver Cowdery
would have consistently and correctly spelled at least the second vowel.

Most of the witnesses believed that Joseph Smith or the interpreters
had some ability to know what the scribe was writing. They may well have occasionally
observed Joseph Smith correcting the scribe without directly looking at the
manuscript. Yet this interference was not automatic, nor did it prevent the
scribe from making mistakes.

The Scribe Repeated Back the Text to Joseph Smith

According to David Whitmer (as found in his own 1887 publicationAn Address to All Believers in
Christ), a dictation of words was followed by a checking sequence
in which the scribe would read back the text to Joseph Smith. If an error
was discovered, Joseph Smith would presumably then read off the correct text
once more until he was satisfied that the scribe had written it down correctly:

Brother Joseph would read off the English to Oliver Cowdery, who was his
principal scribe, and when it was written down and repeated to Brother Joseph
to see if it was correct, then it would disappear, and another character with
the interpretation would appear.20

David Whitmer also referred to this repetition in
an 1881 interview published in the Kansas
City Journal:

He did not use the plates in the translation, but would hold the interpreters
to his eyes and cover his face with a hat, excluding all light, and before
his eyes would appear what seemed to be parchment, on which would appear the
characters of the plates in a line at the top, and immediately below would
appear the translation in English, which Smith would read to his scribe, who
wrote it down exactly as it fell from his lips. The scribe would then read
the sentence written, and if any mistake had been made, the characters would
remain visible to Smith until corrected, when they faded from sight, to be
replaced by another line.21

The specific evidence from the original manuscript is consistent
with the claim that the scribe read back what had been written. In such a
process, Joseph Smith would be checking what he was hearing from the scribe
against what he was viewing in the interpreters. But such agreement would
not guarantee the accuracy of the manuscript. For instance, Amalickiah could be spelledAmeleckiah, but since both spellings
were pronounced the same (when stress was on the first syllable), there would
be no way for Joseph to detect the incorrect spelling when the scribe pronounced
the name. This same difficulty applies to phonetically similar words (such
as mixing up weed
with reed,and with an, and sons with son when immediately followed
by a word beginning with an s).
Most of the undetected errors that remain in the original manuscript could
not have been caught when read back because there was little if any difference
in pronunciation.

Corrections in the original manuscript are also consistent
with a repetition sequence. The clear majority of changes in the original
manuscript were made immediately; that is, the scribe caught the error during
Joseph Smith’s initial dictation. Evidence for these immediate corrections
include: corrections following on the same line, erasures showing ink smearing
(since the ink had not yet dried), or supralinear corrections or insertions
in the line with no change in the level of ink flow or difference in the quill.
These immediate corrections also include numerous cases where the crossed-out
word is only part of the intended word or is obviously miswritten.

On the other hand, there are also numerous changes that are
consistent with a process of correcting errors found while repeating the text.
In these instances, the original form is complete and the error is usually
not obvious (that is, the reading is not a difficult reading); the correction
is supralinear or inserted in the line, but there is no erasure, only a crossout
of the error, and the level of ink flow for the correction is usually different.

We should also note that there is evidence that some corrections
were done considerably later, that is, some time after the repetition
sequence. In fact, a few of these later corrections in the original manuscript
were apparently made when the printer’s manuscript was being copied from the
original or even later when sheets of the 1830 edition were being proofed.
Sometimes the change was by a different scribe or in a different medium (such
as pencil). In virtually every case these few corrections eliminated difficult
readings in the original manuscript.

The Word Chapter and the Corresponding Chapter Numbers Were
Not Part of the Revealed Text

Evidence from both the original and printer’s manuscripts
shows that Joseph Smith apparently saw some visual indication at the end of
a section that the section was ending. Although this may have been a symbol
of some kind, a more likely possibility is that the last words of the section
were followed by blankness. Recognizing that the section was ending, Joseph
Smith then told the scribe to write the word chapter,
with the understanding that the appropriate number would be added later.

There is considerable evidence in both manuscripts to support
this interpretation. First, the word chapter
is never used by any writer in the text itself, unlike the term book, which is used to refer
to an individual book in the Book of Mormon (such as the book of Helaman)
as well as a whole set of plates (such as the book of Nephi, meaning the large
plates of Nephi; see Helaman 2:13—14).

Second, chapters are assigned before the beginning of a book.
For instance, in the original manuscript, we have the following at the beginning
of 2 Nephi:

<Chapter <{V|I}> VIII>

second
Chapter I

The ^ Book of Nephi ^ An account of the death of Lehi . . .

Oliver Cowdery first wrote Chapter at the conclusion of
the last section in 1 Nephi—that is, at the conclusion of
Chapter VII in the original chapter system; our current chapter system dates
from Orson Pratt’s 1879 edition of the Book of Mormon (which has 22 chapters
in 1 Nephi). At this point, Joseph Smith had no indication that a new book
was beginning. All he could see was the end of Chapter VII (namely, the
words "and thus it is Amen" followed probably by blankness or maybe
a special symbol). Later, when Oliver Cowdery was adding the chapter numbers,
he first assigned the Roman numeral VIII
to this first chapter of 2 Nephi. But when he realized that this
was actually the beginning of a new book, he crossed out the whole chapter
designation and inserted (with slightly weaker ink flow) "Chapter
I" after the title of the book, which originally was simply designated
as "The Book of Nephi." Later he realized that there was more than
one book of Nephi, which led him to also insert the word second
(with considerably heavier ink flow).

This system of assigning chapters also explains why the two
manuscripts have chapter numbers assigned to the short books found at the
end of the small plates (Enos, Jarom, Omni, and the Words of Mormon) as well
as 4 Nephi. These books contain only one section, but at the beginning of
each of these short books, Joseph Smith apparently had no knowledge that this
was the case. This fact further shows that Joseph Smith himself did not
know in advance the contents or structure of the text.

Probably the strongest evidence that the word chapter is not original to the
revealed text is that the chapter numbers are assigned later in both manuscripts.
The numbers are almost always written in heavier ink and more carefully. In
many cases, Oliver Cowdery added serifs to his Roman numerals. On the other
hand, his Chapter
is always written rapidly and with the same general ink flow as the surrounding
text. In the printer’s manuscript, at the beginning of Chapter XVII in Alma
(now the beginning of Alma 36), the Roman numeral XVII was written in blue ink, not the normal black
ink. In this part of the printer’s manuscript, Oliver had been using this
same blue ink to rule the manuscript sheets of P prior to copying. Here he
also used this blue ink to assign the chapter number as well as add an s to the word Commandment in the next line.
This example clearly suggests that this part of the original manuscript itself
did not yet have chapter numbers assigned to it when Oliver Cowdery started
to copy it, perhaps six months after it had been dictated.

In addition, there is one case when the scribe got off in his counting of the
chapters. While producing the printer’s manuscript, when he came to Chapter
VIII in Mosiah (now starting at chapter 13, verse 25), Oliver Cowdery accidentally
assigned the Roman numeral IX to this chapter, with the result that all
the numbers for the subsequent chapters in Mosiah are off by one. The compositor
for the 1830 edition caught this error and penciled in the correct number for
all but one of these later chapters.

Internal Evidence for Tight Control

The evidence for loose control seems to rely heavily upon
the notion that the nonstandard use of English in the original text could
not have come from the Lord (since he supposedly only speaks "correct"
English). The use of dialectal English, in this view, is said to be Joseph
Smith’s contribution; thus by inference the Lord only gave Joseph Smith ideas,
not specific words.22 Of course, the spelling out of names
definitely suggests that a theory of loose control must be revised in some
way; Joseph Smith had some view of the specific spelling for names, in particular,
names with impossible spellings for English literates.

In addition, there is substantial evidence within the text
itself for tight control over specific words, phrases, and sentences of English.
For instance, John W. Welch and Tim Rathbone have pointed out an interesting
case where the Book of Mormon makes the same identical (nonbiblical) quote
in widely separated parts of the text.23 The example they
give is based on Lehi’s vision of the kingdom of God as found in 1 Nephi
1:8 and Alma 36:22:

and he thought he sawGod sitting upon his thronesurrounded with numberless concourses of angelsin the attitude of singing and praising their God
(1 Nephi 1:8)

and methought I saw
even as our father Lehi sawGod sitting upon his thronesurrounded with numberless concourses of angelsin the attitude of singing and praising their God
(Alma 36:22)

This identity of quotation provides striking support
for a theory of tight control over the translation.

One of the interesting complexities of the original English-language
text of the Book of Mormon is that it contains expressions that appear to
be uncharacteristic of English in all of its dialects and historical
stages. These structures also support the notion that Joseph Smith’s translation
is a literal one and not simply a reflection of either his own dialect or
the style of early modern English found in the King James Version of the Bible.

For instance, in the original text of the Book of Mormon we
find a number of occurrences of a Hebrew-like conditional clause. In English,
we have conditional clauses like "if you come, then I will come,"
with then being optional.
In Hebrew this same clause is expressed as "if you come and I will come."
In the original text of the Book of Mormon, there were at least fourteen occurrences
of this non-English expression. One occurrence was removed in 1 Nephi
17:50 as Oliver Cowdery was producing the printer’s manuscript by copying
from the original manuscript:

if he should command me that I should say unto this water be thou earth and
it shall be earth (O) > it should be earth (P)

The remaining thirteen occurrences were all removed
by Joseph Smith in his editing for the second edition of the Book of
Mormon, published in 1837 in Kirtland, Ohio. One example comes from the famous
passage in Moroni 10:4:

and if ye shall ask with a sincere heart with real intent having faith in
Christ and he will manifest the truth of it unto you by the power of
the Holy Ghost (P, 1830) > NULL (1837)

This use of and
is not due to scribal error, especially since this if-and expression occurs seven times in one brief
passage (Helaman 12:13—21):

13 yea and if he sayeth unto the earth move and
it is moved

14 yea if he say unto the earth thou shalt go back
that it lengthen out the day for many hours and it is done . .
.

16 and behold also if he sayeth unto the waters
of the great deep be thou dried up and it is done

17 behold if he sayeth unto this mountain be thou
raised up and come over and fall upon that city that it be buried up and
behold it is done . . .

19 and if the Lord shall say be thou accursed that
no man shall find thee from this time henceforth and forever and behold
no man getteth it henceforth and forever

20 and behold if the Lord shall say unto a man because
of thine iniquities thou shalt be accursed forever and it shall be
done

21 and if the Lord shall say because of thine iniquities
thou shalt be cut off from my presence and he will cause that it shall
be so

These examples of the if-and construction in the original text
suggest that Joseph Smith did not simply get the idea of a conditional construction
in his mind. If that had been the case, he should have translated that idea
using the English if-then construction, possibly without the then,
but in any event, without the connective and. The multiple occurrence
of the non-English if-and construction suggests that even the word and
was controlled for.

Conclusion

Evidence from the original manuscript supports the traditional
belief that Joseph Smith received a revealed text through the interpreters.
This idea of a controlled text originates with statements made by the witnesses
of the translation. The evidence from the original manuscript, when joined
with internal evidence from the text itself, suggests that this control was
tight, but not iron-clad. The text could be "ungrammatical" from
a prescriptive point of view, but the use of nonstandard English is not evidence
that the text was not being tightly controlled, or that it did not come from
the Lord, who apparently does not share our insistence on "proper English"
(see D&C 1:24). In fact, the occurrence of non-English Hebraisms such
as the if-and construction
strongly suggests that the text was tightly controlled, down to the level
of the word at least. And the spelling of names such as Coriantumr suggests that control could be imposed
down to the very letter.

All of this evidence (from the original manuscript, witnesses’ statements,
and from the text itself) is thus consistent with the hypothesis that Joseph
Smith could actually see (whether in the interpreters themselves or in his mind’s
eye) the translated English text—word for word and letter for letter—and
that he read off this revealed text to his scribe. Despite Joseph’s reading
off of the text, one should not assume that this process was automatic or easily
done. Joseph had to prepare himself spiritually for this work. Yet the evidence
suggests that Joseph Smith was not the author of the Book of Mormon, not even
its English language translation, although it was revealed spiritually through
him and in his own language.

12. The original typescript signed by Samuel Richards
is located in the LDS Church Historical Department (Samuel Whitney Richards
Collection, Ms 6576, Box 2, Folder 14); the quotes here are based on a transcript
(made by Scott Faulring) of the statement.

15. See the example posess,
first crossed out and then rewritten the same way, in Jessee, Personal Writings of Joseph Smith, 21; the 1840 possession is found on page
468.

16. Ibid., 261.

17. For a published photograph of this respelling,
see page 221 in Daniel H. Ludlow, ed., Encyclopedia
of Mormonism (New York: Macmillan, 1992).

18. Welch and Rathbone, The
Translation of the Book of Mormon, 8.

19. Cook, David Whitmer Interviews, 174.

20. David Whitmer, An
Address to All Believers in Christ (Richmond, Mo.: David Whitmer,
1887), 12.

21. Cook, David Whitmer Interviews, 62.

22. For further discussion of whether or not the
Lord himself insists on using standard English, see the discussion in Royal
Skousen, "Towards a Critical Edition of the Book of Mormon,"BYU Studies 30/1 (winter
1990): 54—6.

23. John W. Welch and Tim Rathbone, "Book
of Mormon Translation by Joseph Smith," in Encyclopedia
of Mormonism,1:210—3.